Ten World Figures Who Died in 2017

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl during a 1989 visit to Dresden, then part of East Germany.
(Reuters/ Michael Urban)

Blog Post

Blog posts represent the views of CFR fellows and staff and not those of CFR, which takes no institutional positions.

I wrote yesterday about ten Americans who died in 2017 who helped shape U.S. foreign policy during their lifetimes. But Americans are not the only ones who influence world affairs. Below are ten world figures who died this year. Each made a mark on history. Some were heroes; some were villains. And for some, which they were is your call to make.

Stanislav Petrov (b. 1939) was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces who in 1983 saved the world from nuclear war. Petrov was born near Vladivostok, Russia. After studying at the Soviet Air Defense Force’s Kiev Higher Engineer Radio-Technical College, he joined the Air Defense Force. He was eventually assigned to monitor the early warning system at the Serpukhov-15 command center outside Moscow. In the early hours of September 26, 1983, Petrov heard alarms sound and the word “LAUNCH” came across the screen—five U.S. ballistic missiles were headed toward the Soviet Union. Despite an immensely stressful situation, Petrov didn’t lose his wits. He had a “gut feeling” that he was witnessing a false alarm. He knew that the early warning system was temperamental, and he reasoned that an authentic U.S. attack would involve hundreds of missiles, not just five. So Petrov told his superiors it was a false alarm. He was right; the early warning system had mistaken sunlight reflecting off of clouds as a missile launch. Petrov’s role as “the man who saved the world” didn’t come to light until 1998, when the former head of the Soviet Air Defense’s Missile Defense Units wrote a memoir. Petrov’s actions, or better yet, his decision not to order action, became the subject of a movie in 2014.

Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens (b. 1919)was a French spy who passed information about German V-1 and V-2 rockets to the Allies during World War II. Born in Saint-Brieuc, France, Rousseau had a knack for languages. During the Nazi occupation, she worked as a local interpreter. She developed a rapport with the Germans and began passing on information she overheard. She was arrested in 1941, but eventually released. She then began working in Paris, again as an interpreter. This time Rosseau was privy to more sensitive war information. Working with the French Resistance under the code name “Amniarix,” Rousseau gave the British details about how work on the V-1 and V-2 was progressing. A British attempt in 1944 to smuggle her to London failed and led to her capture and internment in three concentration camps. She met her husband, Henri de Clarens, at one of the camps. She became ill while imprisoned. Toward the end of the war, the Red Cross helped negotiate her release. After the war, she worked as a translator for the United Nations. In 1993, the CIA awarded her the Seal Medallion for her efforts during World War II. She said of her contributions to the war effort, “What I did was so little. Others did so much more. I was one small stone.” Sometimes small stones make big ripples.

Mário Soares (b. 1924) oversaw Portugal’s transition to democracy in the 1970s. Born in Lisbon, Soares grew up a critic of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar—the fascist dictator who ran Portugal for more than forty years. As a young man, Soares was imprisoned and forced into exile for his political activism on several occasions. That didn’t stop him from opposing Salazar. Trained a lawyer, Soares defended Salazar’s political opponents. He championed decolonization and founded Portugal’s Socialist Party. Salazar died in 1970 and was succeeded by Marcello Caetano, who was ousted from power in the 1974 Carnation Revolution. Political wrangling quickly ensued. Soares eventually emerged as Portugal’s prime minister. He served from 1976 to 1979, and then again from 1983 to 1985. He pushed ahead with decolonization and Portugal’s integration into the European Economic Community. In 1986, Soares became Portugal’s first civilian president since 1926. He served two terms, finally stepping down from political life in 1996. Soares’ political success probably owed something to his refusal to ever slow down. He was often called “sempre em pé,” which is Portuguese for “always on his feet.” That’s not a bad philosophy to follow.

Ali Abdullah Saleh(b. 1947) dominated Yemeni politics for three decades. Born in Bayt al-Ahmar in North Yemen. Saleh chose the military over school. He aligned himself with Colonel Ahmad Husayn al-Ghashmi, one of the leading figures in North Yemen’s 1974 military coup. In 1977, the coup’s leader, Ibrahim Al-Hamdi, was assassinated. Al-Ghashmi took his place, but was himself assassinated less than a year later. Saleh was the next man up. Odds were high that he would meet the same fate al-Hamdi and al-Ghashmi. But Saleh defied the odds. That’s not to say that he ruled efficiently (he didn’t) or that he was a just leader (he wasn’t). In 1990, he succeeded in uniting North and South Yemen, creating the Republic of Yemen. He succeeded in foiling several attempts to oust him from power. His luck ran out in 2011 when the Arab Spring came to Yemen. He was severely wounded in a June 2011 bombing and spent months in Saudi Arabia recuperating. In February 2012, he acknowledged reality and relinquished his presidency. But as Yemen plunged into chaos Saleh remained active behind the scenes. He threw in his lot with the Houthi rebels—making him an enemy of his former benefactor, the Saudis. Earlier this month, Saleh changed sides and threw his lot in with Saudi-backed forces. His luck finally ran out. Houthi forces killed him as he fled the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

Olive Yang(b. 1927) was a Burmese warlord and opium trafficker. She was born in Kokang, Burma in the northern part of the Shan state to a rich and powerful ethnic Chinese family. She was unconventional from the start. She preferred boys clothing, refused to bind her feet in keeping with custom, and pined for her brothers’ girlfriends. So it’s perhaps not surprising that she abandoned aristocratic life to live in the jungles with opium smugglers. There she built a militia known as “Olive’s Boys” that drew from defeated Chinese Nationalist troops who, with arms supplied by the CIA, continued the fight from Burma. They paid their bills trafficking raw opium in Southeast Asia’s infamous Golden Triangle. In 1952, Burmese officials arrested Yang and sentenced her to five years in prison. In 1959, one her brothers abdicated as the leader of the Shan state. Yang quickly took command of the region’s army and became its de facto ruler for four years. During this time she supposedly began a relationship with Wah Wah Win Shwe, an award winning Burmese actress that continues to generate speculation more than half a century later. In 1963, Yang was again arrested. She spent another six years in prison, where she was repeatedly tortured. In 1989, the Burmese government recruited Yang to help broker peace deals with ethnic rebel groups in Kokang. She forged a peace agreement that lasted until 2009. She spent her later years living in Muse, Myanmar, on the border with China.

Other significant world figures who died this year included: M. Cherif Bassiouniwas an Egyptian-American jurist who helped establish war crimes tribunals for Libya and Yugoslavia; LilianeBettencourt was an heiress to the L’Oréal fortune and world’s richest woman; Vitaly Churkinwas a Russian diplomat who served as Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations from 2006-2017; Johnny Halliday was the French Elvis Presley; Roman Herzog was the second president of a reunified Germany; Ahmed Kathrada was a South African anti-Apartheid activist who spent a quarter of a century in prison for resisting minority white rule; Christine Keeler had an affair with a leading Conservative Party official that shocked Britain and helped bring down a British government; King Michael of Romania had the pro-Nazi dictator during World War II arrested and then went into exile when the communists came to power in Romania.